So, my ibook G3's in pieces for another project, but now my HD is being dumb. it was working a few weeks ago, but now when I boot the thing up it spins and sounds normal, but then it just gives up and shuts down. I've tried putting it in an enclosure as it used to work that way too, but now it just spins and doesn't connect to the main computer. I know it's not a problem with the external enclosure as I've got another 2.5 HD floating around that works fine. I've tried pinching it a bit, and giving it a little shake left-right, but still nothing seems to be happening.

Does the drive mount at all? Can you view it in Disk Utility if so? How long does it take for it to "give up and shut down"? Have you put the drive in the external enclosure and tried it in another computer? Have you tried the freeze approach?

It could be a number of things, such as a bad partition header to the head on the drive being FUBAR. If you could drop some more information, I'm sure someone here could figure it out.

Good chance its fried. Could also be going to "sleep" as its just not connecting to anything. Which would mean there is a connectivity issue. I would try formatting the drive if there isn't anything too important on it.

Do you have one of those USB > IDE converter cables? (They rock, BTW) That is, unless you have SATA. I am guessing there are some SATA ones out now though. I would try using this for connecting. Its great for diagnosing problems.

I have some excellent adaptors which do ATA and SATA, notebook and desktop to USB. They come with all the power kit too. Since they are cheap, they do die quite easily (power bricks anyway), but also I find firewire adaptors are much more robust and will mount drives that the USB ones sometimes don't.

Alrighty, sorry for the delay, i've been busy the last few days with other projects that are of higher importance:). So, I hooked up the HD via external ecnlosure, again it didn't mount, but i was able to see it in Disk Utility. Since there wasn't anything valuable on it, I erased it, and then partitioned it (just the one partition). After that it mounted right away just like usual. However, when I went to install Tiger on it, the installer recognized the drive, but would not let me install it. (some error like "can't boot from this disk" or something like that) thanks for your previous replies, but i'm stuck right here. if i can't install an OS on it, i can always just use it as external storage :P

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